7 ms·

It seems like the majority of the comments are not taking into account that this trend began approximately 70,000 years ago - slightly before the various things

It seems like the majority of the comments are not taking into account that this trend began approximately 70,000 years ago - slightly before the various things people here are blaming such as TikTok, Google, writing, Javascript and Twitter. Cutting-edge (heh) technology 70,000 years ago was the stone blade as well as the earliest known primitive art. An interesting guide whenever you're trying to put this kind of thing into context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prehistory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prehistory

knownjorbist 5y ago
I wish I could upvote this more. I would be willing to bet a number of such comments did not even read the article and responding based on impulse with their gripe about modern society du-jour.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  A thing on HN you will see frequently is that someone will be told that X happened and they’ll explain confidently post hoc why. Occasionally, they will misunderstand this as Y happening and they’ll explain that. In the best universe, they will misunderstand X having happened as Y having happened and explain it even though Y did not happen. The existence of this last characteristic makes me trust post hoc explanations very little. Explanations should make falsifiable predictions. It is easy to fit the facts with a false thesis. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29005765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29005765
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    The point system here is meant to help people find insightful comments. There was even a time on this site when it was used like that. But now it's used to show support for opinions you agree with and to find the confident idiots with grand theories of how the world can be modeled.
    - algebraically 5y ago
      Oh the irony.
- sincerely 5y ago
  The HN rule about not being able to ask if someone read the article or imply/suggest that they did not is the worst rule on the site, because it encourages this behaviour :(
  - Der_Einzige 5y ago
    HN needs a lot of rule changes. The narrative of "dang is a great mod" and "HNs rules are actually great" flys in the face of repeated examples of complete incompetence/corruption within HN and it's moderation practices. (E.g. calling discussion about political topics dang doesn't like "ideological flame bait" and deleting the posts.)
    - voldacar 5y ago
      Could you give some specific examples?
    - nindalf 5y ago
      dang being great and HN rules being great are two separate claims. It's entirely possible that someone agrees with one of them and disagrees with the other. For example, me. I disagreed with one of the rules. I spoke to dang about it and shared why. He listened to me, shared his perspective on why the rule exists and went out of his way to resolve the issue for me specifically. He strives to lower the temperature of discussions that get too heated. He tries (and mostly succeeds) to get folks to stay on topic and civil. He keeps the site free from trash or astro-turfing. And he does all this alone. > complete incompetence/corruption within HN This is a strong claim. If you have evidence of it, show us. Or retract it.
  - MrGilbert 5y ago
    Well, you can still point it out by starting your reply with "The article clearly states that [...]" It's the offensive part that's not encouraged here - and I dig that.
guerrilla 5y ago
Far before civilization too, so I guess we can't blame sedentarism either.
- tamaharbor 5y ago
  Kind of like warming since the end of the last glacial period 10,000 years ago.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    You're not trying to imply that that is the cause of the current global warming, are you?
    - kataklasm 5y ago
      relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
silisili 5y ago
> Cutting-edge (heh) technology 70,000 years ago was the stone blade as well as the earliest known primitive art I think it's important to remember that technology is highly, highly iterative. It's not like if Elon Musk were born 70k years ago we'd have cavemen with electric cars. In fact, if all of us were somehow warped back in time that far, I fear we'd be even worse off. We know how to roll fiber optic networks and write ML algorithms, but we'd starve before figuring out how to chase down an animal, or know which berries to eat.
- owenversteeg 5y ago
  If an intelligent modern person with some knowledge of history was sent back to 70,000 years ago (70 kya) we'd probably be able to bring significant help to the group - assuming we were accepted into the group and not immediately killed by our ancestors in peak physical condition. Personally, I'd attempt to introduce: - art and culture from the far future (flutes, 42 kya; figurative art, 40 kya) - Simple ovens (29 kya) and pottery (20 kya) - Rope and various ways to use rope (nets, clothes, bags) 26-28 kya - Saws (20 kya) - Dugout canoes (8 kya) - Basic knowledge of health and disease (concept of potable/non-potable water, "fertility awareness" method for contraception, warm clothing, prevention of injuries, etc) - Food preservation (salting and drying meat, fermented foods, perhaps sealing things with pitch?) - Wheeled carts (3 kya) - "Water bottles": animal skins sealed with pitch Each of these can probably be made/demonstrated over a period of days or weeks and would likely impress the group. If I was really successful and managed to lead the group, I'd probably try to at least get us on our way to these things (would likely take generations): - Attempt animal domestication (13 kya) - Cultivation of barley and wheat (10 kya) - Water wheel (2 kya) - Migration to fertile region (Fertile Crescent perhaps?)
  - arp242 5y ago
    I've sometimes wondered about this as well. We can all understand how saws work; but can you actually make one from scratch? How about a rope? Do you know where to find the right kind of fibre, how to correctly process it, and then make it in to a functional rope? Do you have the know-how to functionally domesticate wild animals and cultivate crops? I'd consider myself a pretty handy guy, but if I were whisked away to 70k years ago this very minute then I'd probably struggle with a lot of that, even though I roughly know how to do it. And that is ignore the obvious communication barriers, that you also need to spend time on basic survival, and things like that. A lot of these crafts developed over generations partly because while the concepts aren't all that complex, the actual doing of it in a way that's effective is a lot harder. I certainly think it'll take a lot more than "days or weeks".
NoWizards 5y ago
There is a recent news about elephants evolving to have no tusks... Something that is happening in a relatively short time span. I will no wonder if our modern trends (consuming anything to get pleasure and short-term rewards) will affect our brain size in a similar time span.
- herval 5y ago
  That was very much guided evolution though - elephants without tusks get spared, the others get killed for the tusks. There’s nothing like that happening with humans at a population scale, outside the realm of conspiracy theories
  - catmanjan 5y ago
    Are you more, or less likely to breed the more social media you consume?
    - herval 5y ago
      If 90% of the people that use social media were culled every 2 years, and only the remaining survived enough to reproduce, we'd (maybe) see some accelerated evolution/correlation in a generation or two, right? (extremely improbable as you're not eliminating a specific physical trait, like in the elephant's case)
_57jb 5y ago
For some reason I saw your list of things people are blaming as ...Google, "writing JavaScript"... I said to myself: Ouch and damn! Fair point. Edited a typo and for clarification, I love all languages and am dripping with sarcasm and snark for all of them equally.
emodendroket 5y ago
Clearly they mean that TikTok is so bad it's actually shrunken our ancestors' brains posthumously.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  I think you meant retroactively.
  - iammiles 5y ago
    Shrinking brain strikes again
    - wiz21c 5y ago
      after a hard burn out I can assure you I saw that my brain actually left my skull (and is now tiny far away on the horizon)
      - throwaway946513 5y ago
        It's been pulled by the event horizon.
        socceroos 5y ago
        Surely it's been pulled by what is beyond the event horizon, not the event horizon itself.
aceBacker 5y ago
I think the answer is the same reason the male brain is larger than the female brain on average. The part of the brain that handles fighting. It's a pretty large part of our brains. The reptilian hindbrain that handles violence isn't needed nearly as much now that we have society and civilization. It's shrinking.
- lambertsimnel 5y ago
  In that case, should we expect to find more shrinking among human male brains than among human female brains?

knownjorbist 5y ago

I wish I could upvote this more. I would be willing to bet a number of such comments did not even read the article and responding based on impulse with their gripe about modern society du-jour.

renewiltord 5y ago
A thing on HN you will see frequently is that someone will be told that X happened and they’ll explain confidently post hoc why. Occasionally, they will misunderstand this as Y happening and they’ll explain that. In the best universe, they will misunderstand X having happened as Y having happened and explain it even though Y did not happen. The existence of this last characteristic makes me trust post hoc explanations very little. Explanations should make falsifiable predictions. It is easy to fit the facts with a false thesis. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29005765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29005765
- iratewizard 5y ago
  The point system here is meant to help people find insightful comments. There was even a time on this site when it was used like that. But now it's used to show support for opinions you agree with and to find the confident idiots with grand theories of how the world can be modeled.
  - algebraically 5y ago
    Oh the irony.
sincerely 5y ago
The HN rule about not being able to ask if someone read the article or imply/suggest that they did not is the worst rule on the site, because it encourages this behaviour :(
- Der_Einzige 5y ago
  HN needs a lot of rule changes. The narrative of "dang is a great mod" and "HNs rules are actually great" flys in the face of repeated examples of complete incompetence/corruption within HN and it's moderation practices. (E.g. calling discussion about political topics dang doesn't like "ideological flame bait" and deleting the posts.)
  - voldacar 5y ago
    Could you give some specific examples?
  - nindalf 5y ago
    dang being great and HN rules being great are two separate claims. It's entirely possible that someone agrees with one of them and disagrees with the other. For example, me. I disagreed with one of the rules. I spoke to dang about it and shared why. He listened to me, shared his perspective on why the rule exists and went out of his way to resolve the issue for me specifically. He strives to lower the temperature of discussions that get too heated. He tries (and mostly succeeds) to get folks to stay on topic and civil. He keeps the site free from trash or astro-turfing. And he does all this alone. > complete incompetence/corruption within HN This is a strong claim. If you have evidence of it, show us. Or retract it.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  Well, you can still point it out by starting your reply with "The article clearly states that [...]" It's the offensive part that's not encouraged here - and I dig that.

guerrilla 5y ago

Far before civilization too, so I guess we can't blame sedentarism either.

tamaharbor 5y ago
Kind of like warming since the end of the last glacial period 10,000 years ago.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  You're not trying to imply that that is the cause of the current global warming, are you?
  - kataklasm 5y ago
    relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

silisili 5y ago

> Cutting-edge (heh) technology 70,000 years ago was the stone blade as well as the earliest known primitive art I think it's important to remember that technology is highly, highly iterative. It's not like if Elon Musk were born 70k years ago we'd have cavemen with electric cars. In fact, if all of us were somehow warped back in time that far, I fear we'd be even worse off. We know how to roll fiber optic networks and write ML algorithms, but we'd starve before figuring out how to chase down an animal, or know which berries to eat.

owenversteeg 5y ago
If an intelligent modern person with some knowledge of history was sent back to 70,000 years ago (70 kya) we'd probably be able to bring significant help to the group - assuming we were accepted into the group and not immediately killed by our ancestors in peak physical condition. Personally, I'd attempt to introduce: - art and culture from the far future (flutes, 42 kya; figurative art, 40 kya) - Simple ovens (29 kya) and pottery (20 kya) - Rope and various ways to use rope (nets, clothes, bags) 26-28 kya - Saws (20 kya) - Dugout canoes (8 kya) - Basic knowledge of health and disease (concept of potable/non-potable water, "fertility awareness" method for contraception, warm clothing, prevention of injuries, etc) - Food preservation (salting and drying meat, fermented foods, perhaps sealing things with pitch?) - Wheeled carts (3 kya) - "Water bottles": animal skins sealed with pitch Each of these can probably be made/demonstrated over a period of days or weeks and would likely impress the group. If I was really successful and managed to lead the group, I'd probably try to at least get us on our way to these things (would likely take generations): - Attempt animal domestication (13 kya) - Cultivation of barley and wheat (10 kya) - Water wheel (2 kya) - Migration to fertile region (Fertile Crescent perhaps?)
- arp242 5y ago
  I've sometimes wondered about this as well. We can all understand how saws work; but can you actually make one from scratch? How about a rope? Do you know where to find the right kind of fibre, how to correctly process it, and then make it in to a functional rope? Do you have the know-how to functionally domesticate wild animals and cultivate crops? I'd consider myself a pretty handy guy, but if I were whisked away to 70k years ago this very minute then I'd probably struggle with a lot of that, even though I roughly know how to do it. And that is ignore the obvious communication barriers, that you also need to spend time on basic survival, and things like that. A lot of these crafts developed over generations partly because while the concepts aren't all that complex, the actual doing of it in a way that's effective is a lot harder. I certainly think it'll take a lot more than "days or weeks".

NoWizards 5y ago

There is a recent news about elephants evolving to have no tusks... Something that is happening in a relatively short time span. I will no wonder if our modern trends (consuming anything to get pleasure and short-term rewards) will affect our brain size in a similar time span.

herval 5y ago
That was very much guided evolution though - elephants without tusks get spared, the others get killed for the tusks. There’s nothing like that happening with humans at a population scale, outside the realm of conspiracy theories
- catmanjan 5y ago
  Are you more, or less likely to breed the more social media you consume?
  - herval 5y ago
    If 90% of the people that use social media were culled every 2 years, and only the remaining survived enough to reproduce, we'd (maybe) see some accelerated evolution/correlation in a generation or two, right? (extremely improbable as you're not eliminating a specific physical trait, like in the elephant's case)

_57jb 5y ago

For some reason I saw your list of things people are blaming as ...Google, "writing JavaScript"... I said to myself: Ouch and damn! Fair point. Edited a typo and for clarification, I love all languages and am dripping with sarcasm and snark for all of them equally.

emodendroket 5y ago

Clearly they mean that TikTok is so bad it's actually shrunken our ancestors' brains posthumously.

Ygg2 5y ago
I think you meant retroactively.
- iammiles 5y ago
  Shrinking brain strikes again
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    after a hard burn out I can assure you I saw that my brain actually left my skull (and is now tiny far away on the horizon)
    - throwaway946513 5y ago
      It's been pulled by the event horizon.
      - socceroos 5y ago
        Surely it's been pulled by what is beyond the event horizon, not the event horizon itself.

aceBacker 5y ago

I think the answer is the same reason the male brain is larger than the female brain on average. The part of the brain that handles fighting. It's a pretty large part of our brains. The reptilian hindbrain that handles violence isn't needed nearly as much now that we have society and civilization. It's shrinking.

lambertsimnel 5y ago
In that case, should we expect to find more shrinking among human male brains than among human female brains?